RJD stuns NDA in Bihar, wins by-election to reserved Bochahan seat

Patna/Muzaffarpur: The opposition RJD in Bihar stunned the ruling NDA on Saturday, after its young candidate Amar Paswan defeated his nearest BJP rival Baby Kumari by a massive margin of 36,658 votes in the by-poll to Bochahan assembly seat.

Paswan (33), who made his debut from the reserved seat last represented by his late father Musafir, polled 82,547 votes while Kumari, a former MLA who had proverbially started off as the favourite, got only 45,889 votes.

Tejashwi Yadav, who had spearheaded the RJD's high-voltage campaign for the by-election, expressed delight over the victory, which raises his party's tally to 76 in the 243-strong assembly.

"The Bochahan by-poll result is an indictment, by the electorate, of the double engine NDA government that is made up of four parties, and which has left education, health, law and order and agriculture in tatters on account of its anti-people policies," Yadav tweeted. The RJD had won 75 seats in the 2020 assembly polls, the highest for any party, though it now has a tally one less than that of the BJP, which had recently inducted three turncoat MLAs of the Vikassheel Insaan Party (VIP).

VIP is headed by Bollywood set designer-turned-politician Mukesh Sahani and Musafir Paswan had won the seat on its ticket. The party this time fielded Gita Devi, the daughter of a multiple-term MLA Ramai Ram, who has been unsuccessful at the hustings in the last couple of elections. The VIP candidate finished a distant third, polling only 29,726 votes, less than the difference between the winner and the runner-up.